


Legerdemain

by Pseudothyrum



Series: The Discoverie of Witchcraft [3]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms, The Question (Comics)
Genre: Big Ice Cream, Case Fic, Conspiracy Theories, Crossover, Gen, I scream you scream we all scream "ahh please help me it's Big Ice Cream", That turn out to be real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudothyrum/pseuds/Pseudothyrum
Summary: The road to forgiveness can be long, twisted, and haunted by mysterious ice cream trucks that never seem to actually sell any ice cream. Less than a week after he had been possessed by a demon, the last thing Question wants is to wake up to find John Constantine in his bedroom, but, as usual, John Constantine has other plans.





	

Vic awakens suddenly, tense and perfectly alert. There is a feeling of electricity in the air, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his skin break out into gooseflesh. There is somebody in his room, at the foot of his bed. That someone coughs awkwardly, which eliminates some of the more dire possibilities. Vic eases his eyes open.

“Hey,” Constantine says, then looks down at his own torso, “did you just throw a pillow at me?”

“No,” Vic obviously lies, sitting up properly, “what are you doing being all incorporeal in my bedroom? Did you die? Are you haunting me? Was letting me get possessed by a demon not enough for you?”

“I’m not de-- can you stop throwing things at me? It’s bloody distracting.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Vic says, as his alarm clock sails through Constantine’s face. Constantine cocks an eyebrow at him. “It’s very cathartic.” Constantine snorts.

“Right,” Constantine puts on his best grin, which doesn’t quite touch his slightly see-through eyes, “So, I know we didn’t part on the best terms--”

“You let me get possessed by a demon. On purpose.”

“Right, and that was maybe not my best plan. But look, I need your help.” It is Vic’s turn to snort, and next thing he knows he is laughing uncontrollably.

“You... you want me to help you,” he says, when he can speak clearly again, “ _You_ want _me_ to help you. After everything that happened last week. You didn’t even come here to say sorry, you just came here to drag me into your mess.” Constantine shifts uncomfortably.

“Yeah, well, I _am_ sorry, alright? I really do need your help.” He grimaces, “Please. There’s nobody else I can ask.”

“Why, because you betrayed all of them and then turned into a ghost and broke into their bedrooms?” Constantine scowls.

“I’m not a ghost. I’m astral projecting. I--” he turns his head sharply to the right, as though looking at something Vic can’t see. “Look, it’s Big Ice Cream, they-” he closes his eyes and sighs resignedly, as if saying it physically pains him- “they actually bloody exist. They picked me up and they’re holding me somewhere, I think in Hub City. They--” His head jerks to the side, as though he has been struck by an unseen hand, and he vanishes from existence, like he had never been there at all.

Vic blinks slowly, staring at the empty space. He could almost believe that he had imagined it, he’s had enough weird dreams featuring Constantine since last week, but his pillow still lies forlorn against his dresser, the alarm clock is still smashed against the wall, and the weird electricity still charges the air. He lets himself fall backwards onto the remaining pillow and sighs.

He’d really been looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep for once.

***

It isn’t like he’s doing this to help Constantine, Question reassures himself for the thousandth time as he cuts through a dark alleyway. He just wants to take down Big Ice Cream. That Constantine is tangled up in this mess is an unexpected benefit. Benefit? An unexpected _distraction_ , but maybe one that could lead him to the true culprit, to the people who truly run Hub City. Question barely even registers the noise the mugger makes as he twists the knife from her grip and breaks her arm in one swift motion. He glances up at the sky, where the first light of dawn is peeking through the clouds and the smoke from a building fire a few streets over. Good. The Drivers will be in.

Question approaches a nondescript garage building and casually smashes the lock on one of the side doors. None of the people sitting in the room beyond the door even glance up at the sound. He casts his eyes around the room, and his gaze falls on one of the trucks. An ice cream truck. He walks up to the bearded man sitting in the driver’s seat, who is worrying a pen between his teeth while staring at a clipboard.

“Good morning,” Question glances at the man’s nametag, “Troy.”

“Good morning, sir,” the man regards Question’s missing face warily, “Quite early for ice cream, sir.”

“It’s never too early for ice cream, Troy” Question says. Troy’s eyes widen.

“Have you heard from our friend Agnes?” Troy asks, looking about himself shiftily as he does so.

“Visiting the Italian duchess at Charing Cross,” Question responds formally.

“Have you seen the snowbird fly?” Asks Troy, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes, thirty-one times.” Troy gasps audibly in response, and quickly forms a circle with his index fingers and thumbs, turning his hands so the triangle he makes with his remaining fingers point at the ground. Question responds in kind, easily replicating the crude ice cream cone sign. Troy turns and gestures for Question to follow him, deeper into the building, ultimately into a refrigerated room lined with cases of ice cream. Question resists the urge to shiver.

“What can I do for you, brother?” Troy asks, apparently untouched by the cold.

“We captured a man,” Question says cautiously, “a blond man. British. Mouthy. Do you know where he’s being held?” Troy shrugs.

“Think I heard something about that, but it’s a bit further up the chain than me. Have you asked the Vendors?” Question is thankful for his mask, hiding his excited reaction as it does. The Vendors... he almost hadn’t believed they actually existed.

“I’ve been looking for them,” he says cautiously, trying to summon up every detail of Big Ice Cream’s rituals that he’s been able to glean over the several months spent investigating, “Could a friendly Dane point the way?” Troy cocks his head.

“The Fair,” He says, after a long, silent moment, “They’re at the Fair.” He looks at his watch, “I have to get back to the truck, brother.” He sticks out his hand, and Question frantically tries to keep pace with the elaborate secret handshake that he’s only ever seen performed once, from a distance. When it is complete, Troy nods once and walks out of the room without looking back, leaving Question to shiver alone.

***

It doesn’t take long to get to the site of the World’s Fair, now a well-maintained park across the river from Hub City. By pure gut instinct Question heads towards the museum, uncertain of what exactly to look for. Ignoring the few startled looks he gets from passersby and tourists, he circles the building and finds an out-of-the-way door with an ice cream cone engraved above it. He snorts as he forces the lock. Too easy. He makes it about five steps into the musty hallway before a black bag descends over his face and rough hands seize his arms. He feels a needle slide into his arm almost before he can react.

“Oh,” he thinks woozily as he sinks into the arms of whoever had injected him, “that explains it.”

***

Question wakes up with his head lolling over the back of an exceptionally uncomfortable wooden chair. Instinctively he jerks his hands up, only to find that they are handcuffed to the arms of his chair. The sides of his face feel raw and scratched up, as though someone has tried to remove his mask by brute force. He cautiously moves his jaw, confirming that they were unsuccessful. Finally sitting up straight, he notices for the first time the other person in the room.

Constantine is sitting up against the back wall of the room they have been locked in, which appears to be a large storage closet. His arms are bound at his sides, hands and feet tightly tied to the chair legs. Someone has very wisely gagged him; Question can’t help but think that maybe Big Ice Cream isn’t all that bad after all. At the sight of Question stirring he perks up and begins moving, making the chair leap a few centimeters off the ground.

“Hmmm!” he says through the gag, “hmm huh hmhuhuuuh.”

“Well,” says Question, “they gagged you, so clearly they know you. Screwed over some Masons lately?” Constantine does his best to scowl. Like his attempt to mutter darkly, this is impeded somewhat by the gag. Question can’t help but laugh, and Constantine begins to wiggle his head around trying to shake the thing loose, glaring balefully at Question as he does. Question rolls his eyes behind his mask. “Let me help, you idiot.” He scoots his chair forward painstakingly, and, with a bit of awkward maneuvering on both their parts, he pulls off the gag.

“Right,” says Constantine, spitting out the wadded up piece of fabric that had been in his mouth. Question notes with mild distress that it was a soda jerk’s hat. “Right, I don’t know what it is that you and your weird bloody friends are up to, but this conspiracy business is none of mine.” Question notices for the first time that an ugly bruise mars the left side of his face, a trickle of blood runs down from a split eyebrow.

“ _My_ weird friends?” Question asks incredulously as Constantine does something to the ropes around his arms and legs, making them fall away, “they snatched you first, not me. How am I supposed to know that it isn’t you they’re after? They only picked me up because I came looking for you, like an idiot.”

“Because they were _asking_ about y--” Constantine slams his mouth closed so hard that Question can hear the click of his teeth. His face takes on a familiar mulish look, and he fishes a pack of cigarettes from the coat that had been tucked away on a shelf rather than looking at Question. For his part, Question feels as though he has been suddenly dropped in a freezing lake. Constantine knows everything about him, almost everything. He feels his lip curl behind his mask.

“And what, they didn’t let you go immediately after you told them everything there was to know? Guess they had to make sure you didn’t come running to warn me. Like you would bother.”

Before Constantine can respond the door behind him slams open. Question hop-shuffles his chair around so he can see the door, where a man and a woman in aprons are staring in surprise at Constantine.

“Hey!” says one of them.

“Wha--?” says the other. Both of them raise their guns to point at him

“Sod this for a game of soldiers,” Constantine says, and vanishes. His half-finished cigarette falls to the ground, abandoned. Question sympathizes.

“What?!” says the man, pointing with astonishment at where Constantine had been.

“H-hey!” says the woman, looking around wildly as though Constantine had perhaps simply ducked behind a shelf.

“Typical,” Question mutters underneath his breath, which draws the attention of the two idiots to himself.

“This one is still here,” says the first one. Question notices that they are both wearing nametags, which seems slightly counterintuitive for a secret organization. His nametag reads “Freddie.”

“Well observed,” Question says. They ignore him.

“He’s the only one the bosses want anyways,” says the second one, whose nametag proclaims her to be “Kevin.” Kevin seizes the back of his chair and drags him roughly from the room, with Freddie following on their heels. Question resigns himself to the path his life is taking.

It takes a few minutes of being dragged through hallways before Question is deposited under the only light in an otherwise dark room. Just visible sitting at a table in the dark are several people who are muttering amongst themselves quietly. When Kevin lets the legs of Question’s chair thud to the ground they all turn to look at him, falling silent immediately.

“This is him?” asks a woman’s voice. Question assumes one of the two who brought him in nods; he doesn’t bother looking around to check.

“What happened to the other one?” a man with a heavy Italian accent asks from somewhere to Question’s left.

“He vanished!” says Freddie, “It was magic!”

“Of course it was, Freddie,” says one of the shadowy figures. Question can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Did you perhaps bother to search the room before deciding that he was a warlock?” There is a long and awkward moment of silence, and Question can hear Kevin and Freddie shuffling uncomfortably behind him.

“Not like he gave us anything. Except for a lot of second-hand smoke.” Freddie mutters.

“He was allowed access to cigarettes?!” the woman on the far right of the table asks incredulously.

“Well, yeah,” Kevin pipes up, “he won them off us in a game of poker.”

“He won--” Question can just make out the man letting his head fall into his hands in despair. “Fine. Fine, the pair of you go round up everybody in the building and hunt down your magic man. We will be discussing this during your annual performance reviews.” Both Freddie and Kevin chant a hurried “yes sir” in unison and scurry out the door.

“Hard to find good help these days,” says Question into the frosty silence, which grows immeasurably frostier as the shadowy heads turn to look at him.

“Well, Mr. Question--” the woman on the far right begins, before Question interrupts her.

"Please, it's _Dr_. Question. I didn't go to mystery school for four years to be called "mister"' She pretends not to have heard.

“We here at the Organization have noticed your intense interest in our simple business dealings. Of course we could not allow this to stand. We are legitimate businesspeople dedicated to bringing delicious frozen treats to the people of Hub City. What could be more noble or benevolent?”

“Right,” says Question, “because nothing says legitimate business like referring to it as “legitimate business.” Nothing says benevolent like kidnapping somebody who’s looking into your totally legitimate business. Not to mention you kidnapped my friend, who didn’t even believe you existed.”

“Yeah, actually,” says one of the men, “who authorized that kidnapping, Rocky Road? Feels pretty sloppy on our part. The Drivers certainly would have loved to hear about it ahead of time.”

“Neapolitan, can we maybe not do this in front of the man who has been investigating us?” snaps the woman in the centre of the table. This sets all of them to hushed bickering, which, despite Question’s best efforts, he cannot overhear.

“See,” says a quiet voice right next to Question’s ear, “I bloody told you, didn’t I?” Question can feel a finger pressed against his lips, though there is no one there. “ _Your_ weird friends.” Question tries to turn his head to look at the source of the voice. “Don’t look, you great prat,” Constantine says, cuffing him lightly on the back of the head. “I’m going to break you free and distract them, and we’re going to have to make a break for it, alright?” Question nods minutely. He feels the handcuffs click as they come undone, and he surreptitiously frees his wrists.

Suddenly light floods the room and illuminates the head table, kicking off chaos as the seven individuals there desperately dive for cover, all trying to hide their faces at once. Constantine, suddenly visible, hauls Question out of his chair, and together they push past the startled Freddie and Kevin and sprint into the darkened hallways.

***

Some time later, wheezing only slightly, Question supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised that he and Constantine have gotten hopelessly lost in the surprisingly labyrinthine corridors. Constantine, for his part, seems to be literally trying to cough up a lung.

“Did you have a plan beyond ‘get out of the room’?” Question asks, very much not out of breath. Constantine scowls.

“At least I got you out, mate. Trust me, you would’ve hated getting interrogated by those wankers. Their shadowy figure mumbo jumbo would have clashed with your enigmatic mystery man shtick.”

“Speaking of getting out,” says Question, “why didn’t you just do that from the start? Couldn’t you have just gone all invisible without me needing to be there?” Constantine devolves into a fit of coughing, and Question isn’t entirely sure it’s due to the exertion.

“Magic, mate, it’s bloody weird.” Constantine does not elaborate, and Question decides to let it lie. Some things are better left unknown.

“So should we keep trying to find a way out of here? Can you... magic a way out?” Constantine casts him a wryly amused look.

“No, I can’t ‘magic a way out,’ I’m not exactly...” he looks away, towards the echoing sound of running footsteps, and sighs. “Fifth time’s the charm, eh?” he says and, seizing the sleeve of Question’s coat, hauls him down yet another dark corridor.

***

Rushing through the catacombs towards the outside world with the constant sound of footsteps at their backs all seems to take one single, breathless moment, and Question does not pause to think until they are already in his car and halfway back to Hub City. Question coughs ostentatiously when Constantine tries to light a cigarette in the car, and Constantine coughs even more ostentatiously when Question presses on his belt buckle and releases the binary gas so he can take off his mask. For a long time they drive in silence.

“So, what are we going to do to those ice cream tossers?” Constantine asks. “I’ve never sent seven people to Hell at once before,” his grin is wicked and cruel.

“You can’t solve all your problems by sending them to Hell, John.” Vic says, sighing. Constantine puts on an exaggerated expression of disappointment.

“Well you’re just no bloody fun at all. What’re you going to do, enigma them to death?” Vic rolls his eyes as they pull into his parking spot at KBEL.

“Do you honestly think I go anywhere without a button camera?”

***

He leaves Constantine in his own office, with strict admonitions against both smoking and snooping, though he fully expects neither directive to be even slightly obeyed. It takes him some time and a few creative lies about sources to convince the head of the station that this is news that must be reported, and even more time to film the bit and get it to air. Walking back to his office he hands a copy of the raw footage and all his accumulated research to Nora, with instructions to give it to the police as soon as possible. He feels a great weight off his shoulders, though he knows that for every member of Big Ice Cream they catch, dozens will escape detection. He may have beheaded the monster, but it will recover in time.

He walks into his office to find Constantine stubbing out what appears to be his third cigarette in an ashtray that Vic is certain had been buried under papers in a locked drawer, his feet up on Vic's desk, watching the broadcast of the Big Ice Cream story. He turns around as the grainy image of the seven heads of Big Ice Cream flash up on the screen, and grins.

"You're pretty bloody good at that," Constantine says, gesturing at the screen. Vic feels an unexpected rush of pride at the compliment, which he clamps down on immediately.

"It's my job," he says, flat and noncommittal. The corners of Constantine's grin twitch downwards slightly, but he stays smiling. It doesn't quite reach his eyes anymore, and Vic is suddenly fighting an unwelcome wave of regret. He folds his arms and keeps his face intentionally blank.

"Did you think I'd just get over it? We'd go on a wacky adventure and everything would work out and I'd just forgive you for what you did?" Constantine rubs the back of his head, eyes slightly downcast.

"Well... yeah, kinda. You'd be surprised how well it works with me mates." Vic snorts.

"You've barely even apologized, John. Just dragged me right back into a mess." He takes a deep breath, seeks his centre, "Look, thank you for helping me take down Big Ice Cream, but... maybe we shouldn't work together again. For a while, at least. Nora can show you out."

Vic turns on his heel and walks away before he has to deal with the squirming feeling in his chest that Constantine's surprised and hurt expression is stirring up. He walks straight to his car and gets in and drives directly home. He leaves the windows open so he does not have to smell the lingering scent of John Constantine. He sits on his bed and watches mindless television until it is time to sleep, then he lies alone in the dark and stares at the ceiling. He seeks his centre, and does not allow himself to think.

***

Vic awakens suddenly, a feeling of wrongness permeating his whole being. Slowly he looks over his shoulder at the foot of his bed, but there is no Constantine there, incorporeal or otherwise. He ignores a brief jolt of disappointment and furrows his brow, casts his mind back to his thoughts as he woke. Something draws him towards the kitchen, vague half-memories of a scuffling sound there, perhaps lowered voices. There is a light on, and he tenses minutely, ready to strike. He never leaves the lights on. On the counter there is a bowl, placed in the centre of the pool of light so it cannot be missed. He knows what is in it before he looks, but he looks anyways. Several slowly melting scoops of ice cream stare back at him. Rocky Road. Mechanically he puts the bowl in the sink, goes back to bed, and lies down in the darkness. He does not sleep again.


End file.
